P s 

1169 

Ms 
■907- 

opy 3 




Class __2^Z/^ 
Book 4^ 



^ 7" 



Copi^htN^ 



'^p^J^\S 



CDPyRIGHT DEP081K 



BRYANT AND THOREAU 




s,j;o « v;^.s:w« 



r 



~^-'<^ ^ 






Copyright, i^oy, by 

THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY 

all rights reserved 



'^'^- 

■^m^-* 



v.». 



\ INTRODUCTION 

1 By Professor Curtis Hidden Page 

D Deep were my musings in life's early blossom 

:? 'Mid the twilight of mountain-groves wandering long, 

wrote Bryant in a poem first printed by the 
New York Review for February, 1826. 
Bryant had just come to New York, in 1825, 
to be associate editor of this newly founded 
magazine. He had at last decided to give up 
his profession of the law, which was so irk- 
some ; no longer to 

. . . scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 
And mingle among the jostling crowd. 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud, 

but to return to the "calm life" of thought 
and poetry — 

That won my heart in my greener years, 

and to have the courage to be, for better or for 
worse, a man of letters. This decision had 
been reached only after much reflection and 
hesitation, after many nightly wanderings 

ix 



among the mountain-woods of Great Bar- 
rington, — after long musings under the stars. 
He was twenty-four or twenty-five when he 
thus spoke of his "greener years" as already 
belonging to the distant past — a mood that 
need not surprise us in the young man who 
had written Thanatopsis at the age of six- 
teen or seventeen ; and he was thirty when he 
finally came to this decision, which marked 
the turning-point in his life. 

These deciding years were also the most 
fruitful, in poetic production, of all his hfe. 
From 1824 to 1826 he wrote more than twice 
as many poems as in any other three years; 
and among these poems are many of his most 
characteristic and best, such as Autumn 
Woods, The Lapse of Time, Mutation, Monu- 
ment Mountain, November, A Forest Hymn, 
The Death of the Flowers, "I cannot forget 
with what fervid devotion," The New Moon, 
The Journey of Life, and October; and espe- 
cially several poems of the stars, including 
The Hymn to the North Star, The Song of 
the Stars, The Firmament, and The Con- 
junction of Jupiter and Venus. Yet it is 
probable that not half the poems written dur- 
ing these years are preserved. Bryant was al- 

X 



ways the sternest critic of his own writings. 
Of a series of three odes, written a few years 
earlier, he has included only one in his works. 
Of the many poems written for Miss Fair- 
child, before she became Mrs. Bryant, we 
have but one — "O Fairest of the rural 
maids." So it may well be that in choosing 
for publication only what he considered his 
best, he rejected, in this important period, 
many characteristic poems which, in view of 
the small total amount of his work, we can ill 
afford to lose. Musings would seem to be one 
of these. Though in the case of Bryant it is 
particularly difficult to judge of dates by in- 
ternal evidence — so little did his thought and 
style change from the beginning to the end of 
his work, from Thanatopsis to The Flood of 
Years — yet I feel almost safe in assigning our 
poem to the year 1825 ; the more so since it is 
a poem of Autumn, and since the comet of 
Encke, which he speaks of in the poem and 
names in his note, was visible in September 
and October of that year. 

In any case, Musings is thoroughly char- 
acteristic of Bryant. No one but he, in the 
early part of the nineteenth century in Amer- 
ica, could have written the beautiful lines — 

xi 



. . . Was breathing incense o'er the pall 
Of the shrouded earth : and dark and tall . . . 
Stood up the gray old trees. 

He speaks again of ''tail gray trees" in The 
Firmament, written at Great Barrington in 
1825. We find "tall and dark," again ending 
a line, in the Forest Hymn, also written in 
1825. 

Indeed, Bryant seems to have realized that 
he had a tendency to overwork these too 
easily coupled adjectives; for in Monument 
Mountain he later changed his original read- 
ing of 1824, "these gray old rocks," to "these 
reverend rocks." Nowhere has he used the 
phrase more effectively than in this brief 
tenth line of Musings, which stands out bold 
and alone among the longer lines. We find 
here also not a few other phrases that are still 
more distinctively characteristic of Bryant, 
such as "the shrouded earth," "the scarf of 
years," "the lovely vestal throng." 

The central thoughts of the poem, as well 
as their phrasing, may be closely paralleled 
in Bryant's well-known work of this period. 
It would seem that from the time when he 
wrote Thanatopsis he could hardly conceive 
of earth otherwise than as "the great tomb of 

xii 



man," "one mighty sepulchre." So here, he 
calls it 

. . . one vast chamber of the dead: 
A mighty mausoleum, where 
Nature lay shrouded: and the tread 
Of man gives out a hollow sound, 
As from a tomb. 

The Journey of Life is of all Bryant's pub- 
lished poems the one which most closely re- 
sembles Musings; in fact, it is the expression, 
condensed into three brief stanzas, of the 
same succession of thoughts and moods. To 
make this entirely clear one has but to quote 
the first two lines of each stanza, — 

Beneath the waning moon I walk at night 
And muse on human life . . . 

The trampled earth returns a sound of fear — 
A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs . . . 

And I, with faltering foot-steps, journey on, 
Watching the stars that roll the hours away . . . 

After Bryant had written The Journey of 
Life (and we know that this was in 1826), 
he perhaps laid aside the poem Musings, 
thinking that he had given the essence of it 
in his briefer lyric. We may be permitted, 
xiii 



however, to prefer the more full and free and 
spontaneous version, and may even find it 
more beautiful than the other. It may lead 
us more gently and persuasively to the mood 
of quiet acceptance and aspiration which 
Bryant drew so often from converse with 
night and the stars. "The thoughtful stars," 
he calls them in The Firmament; he was ever 
their poet and devotee, and they never failed 
to bring him inspiration and "sweet com- 
mune." Most of all he loved the Pleiades — 
"the gentle sisters," as he names them here — 

The group of sister-stars ... the gentle seven, 

as he says again in a later tribute, The Con- 
stellations. Through all his long life, devoted 
more to public service than to poetry, and for 
the most part "in city pent," he needed only 
to walk alone at night, 

And toward the eternal stars again aspire, 

in order to find again the memories of his 
youth, and the Nature-inspiration which was 
the inmost essence of his genius. 

New York, February, 1907. 



XIV 



/^^. 



r^v.^/tcD ^^^j^ A-c..^ /w.:^ «^' 



iJ.^'V.* 



' J U^^'oj -z^^fcr ZW<^ ,^^22^/ ^*C^z^ 

'^ Clri'^^ -e<«L^^ yi«^.^^e^' ,«2*t,^ AyX/^ a[Z„^.*^..iZr■ 



^ 




^#>«v *^^*^ 'jw*^^ /!<:*<St- z^*-*^ *- /fi^JLi- 

Pg-^ -g^^X^e^-- H»^ J ' >U!;t>XJ l > y» IM J 'II NjC K I I ifcl B l ^J. 



^tu.^ .^^ ^-*^ .^^^t^ V /t<>- ^/>-/ :*^ *^ 

j'.^Vfcr ^^^cj^ijr ^Oc**^^ ^— /?h,^r^ /«t-«*^ ^^t^n^ 

/M-A.^t~^ /Lc-^i^jC^ -^^e^tu-^^ ''0i4,i^ ^(..a^'f-y ^*T*^yv_ 




L-p^-r-^ — ^^t«< tV ^-^-rrut^ tU^r-^ Cu^ ^ 



/f^^. 



/ 






7^ ^ >^ 



i/ X y /■ 



,^4^j^j^i ;- ^a ipait' 



MUSINGS 

I pass'd on my nightly path alone; 
No friendly form was hovering near, 
No friendly voice was in mine ear, 
But the night wind's wailing tone. 
On the wide drear field no autumn bloom 
Look'd gay, no flowret's rich perfume 
Was breathing incense o'er the pall 
Of the shrouded earth : and dark and tall 
And sighing to the passing breeze 
Stood up the gray old trees. 

I pass'd on my nightly path alone 
And my weary feet trode faintly on : 
I look'd around me — the desolate earth 
To wan and sorrowful thoughts gave birth 
And flung its own dark-woven stole 
And its damp chill breathings o'er my soul 
And my spirit was heavy : It is sad 
To look on this beautiful earth when clad 
In its robes of darkness ; as it were 
But one vast chamber of the dead: 
xvii 



'aas^sasnssHn 



A mighty mausoleum, where 

Nature lay shrouded: And the tread 

Of man gives out a hollow sound, 

As from a tomb. I look'd around 

O'er the desolate earth: there was no ray 

Of gladness there: I turn'd away. 

And look'd to the glorious heavens afar, 

Where the stranger orb,^ in his flaming car, 

Rode on his destined way: 

Like a proud and bloody conqueror, 

Bearing the banner of his war, 

Arrayed in his golden robes of fame. 

And crown'd with a victor's diadem. 

I look'd to the lovely vestal throng 

Of shining stars, and they smiled on me 

With a kind and gentle sympathy — 

For I have lov'd them long: 

From youth to manhood I have lov'd 

With each pure and bright divinity 

To hold sweet commune: I have rov'd. 

In boyhood's hours of glee, 

And since the sombre scarf of years 

Was over me, full many a night 

Beneath their canopy of light. 

And felt my soul grow pure and bright 

' The comet of Encke- 

xviii 



f T- 11 I iiijiii iTi*a*JMiAifH- •■ ■ - 'tT- ■■ r'-'^^'irTrr"-H"1 



As I gaz'd on them : And yet it cheers 

My spirit, when the phantom fears 

Of the far future darkly rise, 

Like storms in autumn's mellow skies, 

And memories of sorrow roll. 

Like mountain mists, upon my soul. 

I lov'd them all : each one had power 
To chase the shades of my dark hour: 
Each one was dear: but yet, than all 
That sate within Night's regal hall, — 
As round some Sultan's haram throne 
Sit the bright dames, — more sweetly shone, 
To me, my own lov'd Pleiades; 
When glancing through the old elm trees, 
That proudly rear'd their leafy dome 
Around my boyhood's peaceful home. 
As the eyes of gentle sisters, they 
Sent down their mild and tranquil ray. 

When years had roll'd and on their wings 
Were borne away life's blossomings. 
Their gentle smile, serene and calm. 
Came o'er my heart, a healing balm. 
For it brought in all the glow of truth 
The hallow' d memories of youth. 



XIX 




'Z*;*,^,,^ ^f'*^ ^A^ ^^*^ 






U-VtJ^ 



^^<*^ 




^xVtst, ^^.^ji^^Ct^ ^^-^<:^5^s>*w^-^,^ 



p-^'-'^y 








;^^<. 

^:;:^ 



^^^-^ 















^ 




^ --^C^/^ ^--^t>^ ^^z.-^^^ . . 






^"^ 







^. 



^ 



^^^-c-'*!:^. 







*$^*-**=^?^ .^^'"^%'z^ ^^^.-^^ , 




INTRODUCTION 

The ballad here printed for the first time, 
through the liberality of Mr. Bixby, is proba- 
bly the earliest of the extant verses of the 
author. No date can with certainty be given 
it; but very likely it was written during his 
college life, which ended in the summer of 
1837. It was during those years at Harvard 
that he read Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, and 
still earlier, like many young poets, he had 
delighted in the easy, flowing verse of Mrs. 
Hemans. 

This ballad (perhaps the only one he ever 
wrote) savors of both Tasso and Mrs. He- 
mans. In The Service, written in 1840, are 
traces of this early interest in Godfrey of 
Boulogne and the Crusades; and portions of 
The Service may have been written a year or 
two before it was offered to Margaret Fuller 
for The Dial, in 1840, and by her declined. 

This ballad was never offered anywhere for 

printing, I fancy, but cherished by some aunt 

or cousin into whose hands it fell, and thus 

preserved in the Thatcher family at Bangor, 

xxiii 



Maine, where Mr. Bixby found it in 1906, 
along with later verses unknown to the pub- 
lic, which appeared in The Bibliophile So- 
ciety's recent Thoreau publication. 

The poetical product of Thoreau's youth 
was much larger than he ever allowed to ap- 
pear in print; nor did the whole of it fall into 
the hands of his literary executors, — his sis- 
ter Sophia, Emerson, Ellery Channing, Har- 
rison Blake, E. H. Russell and myself. I 
name these six persons, because all of us 
have, first or last, had a hand in the work of 
presenting his writings to the public. To 
these might be added Mr. Henry Salt, his 
English biographer, who edited in London the 
only collection of his poems aiming at com- 
pleteness which has yet appeared. Several 
persons aided Mr. Salt in this collection, 
notably, Mr. Blake, myself and Miss Anna 
Ward, of Spenser, Mass. But none of these 
eight persons ever had all Thoreau's verses in 
hand, or even within their knowledge. Sophia 
Thoreau may possibly be the exception, but I 
doubt it. 

F. B. Sanborn 

Concord, Massachusetts, 
January 28, 1907. 

xxiv 




mae&n^Km^. 



i ! ".i.xuy 1 




GODFREY OF BOULOGNE 

The moon hung low o'er Provence vales, 

T was night upon the sea ; 
Fair France was wooed by Afric gales, 

And paid in minstrelsy; 
Along the Rhone there moves a band. 

Their banner in the breeze, 
Of mail-clad men with iron hand. 

And steel on breast and knees : 
The herdsman following his droves 

Far in the night alone. 
Read faintly through the olive groves, — 

T was Godfrey of Boulogne. 

The mist still slumbered on the heights. 

The glaciers lay in shade. 
The stars withdrew with faded lights. 

The moon went down the glade. 
Proud Jura saw the day from far. 

And showed it to the plain ; 
She heard the din of coming war 

But told it not again : 
The goatherd seated on the rocks. 

Dreaming of battles none, 
xxvii 



Was wakened by his startled flocks, — 
'T was Godfrey of Boulogne. 

Night hung upon the Danube's stream, 

Deep midnight on the vales; 
Along the shore no beacons gleam, 

No sound is on the gales ; 
The Turkish lord has banished care, 

The harem sleeps profound, 
Save one fair Georgian sitting there, 

Upon the Moslem ground; 
The lightning flashed a transient gleam, 

A flaring banner shone, 
A host swept swiftly down the stream, — 

'T was Godfrey of Boulogne. 

T was noon upon Byzantium, 

On street and tower and sea; 
On Europe's edge a warlike hum, 

Of gathered chivalry: 
A troop went boldly through the throng 

Of Ethiops, Arabs, Huns, 
Jews, Greeks and Turks, — to right their wrong; 

Their swords flashed thousand suns. 
Their banner cleaved Byzantium's dust. 

And like the sun it shone; 
Their armor had acquired no rust, — 

T was Godfrey of Boulogne, 
xxviii 



JUN 24 1907 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

lililllllillllllll 

015 863 381 4 



